The nation's unemployment rate climbed to its highest level in nearly eight years last month as a tepid economic recovery failed to create enough jobs to absorb a big jump in the number of people looking for work.

April's jobless rate was 6.0 percent, up from 5.7 percent the month before, the Labor Department reported Friday. The rise took the closely watched measure of the economy's health to territory it hasn't visited since August 1994.

The sharp run-up in the unemployment rate, which came despite a government estimate last week that the economy grew at a robust 5.8 percent pace in the first three months of the year, underscores the fragile nature of the upturn now under way.

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Consumer spending has been increasing at a moderate pace in recent months. But businesses, reeling from the worst profit squeeze in decades, are still cutting back on investments in their operations and are adding workers sparingly.

That's prompted forecasters to predict that unemployment will remain stubbornly high for months to come, even as the economy grows. Some are even warning of a "jobless recovery" in which renewed growth fails to put people back to work.

"The kinds of employment gains we get will be fairly modest," said Steven Wood, an economist at the Walnut Creek consulting firm FinancialOxygen.

NOT AS BAD AS IT LOOKS

While last month's spike in the unemployment rate wasn't welcome, the news wasn't as bad as it may have seemed at first glance. The rate didn't rise because of widespread job destruction. The economy actually gained a modest 43, 000 jobs during the period.

Instead, what caused the increase was the entry of 565,000 people into the labor force. Few of them were able to find work right away and most quickly joined the ranks of the jobless.

Such a development is common as the economy moves from recession to recovery as improving conditions draw people back into the labor force who may have left to go to school or travel, for example.

"The unemployment rate rose because people who gave up hope now are more hopeful and are presenting themselves for work," said Neal Soss, an economist with the brokerage firm Credit Suisse First Boston.

In a sign of the softness of the market for workers, the Labor Department revised the gain of 58,000 jobs it originally reported for March to a loss of 21,000 jobs. That represented the second month in a row that initially reported increases in jobs melted away after government statisticians had more time to crunch the data.

Job seekers report that it remains tough to get work, especially in such hard-hit fields as technology.

"It's very difficult to find a job," said San Francisco resident Don Botsford, who was left high and dry late last year when his software company went out of business. Botsford, 25, said he has 164 names organized on a spreadsheet and is systematically contacting them in his search for work.

'NICE TO MEET YOU'

"The only way I'm getting in is when I have a contact within a company," he said. "But I'm hearing, 'It's nice to meet you, but we just laid off 800 people.' "

Still, said Botsford, who moved to the Bay Area from Massachusetts about 1 1/2 years ago, conditions may be thawing, if just slightly: "People will actually reply to you. There is not the bunker mentality where human resources people hide from all the applicants."

The April employment report offered mixed signals about the state of the job market.

The service sector showed its best gains since the recession ended, while the job loss in manufacturing was only 19,000 in April, less than one-sixth the pace of losses from March through January. Construction was a big loser, shedding 79,000 jobs, a decline that may have been exaggerated by seasonal adjustments.

On the plus side, temporary employment added 66,000 jobs during April. Temporary workers were one of the hardest-hit groups during the recession. Renewed growth in temporary jobs signals that employers need more hands, but aren't yet confident enough to take on permanent workers.

Less positively, though, the average workweek was shorter in April than the previous month. Workers also had to spend more time looking for work. The average length of unemployment rose by 1.2 weeks to 16.6 weeks.

The job losses of the last 18 months have hit minorities particularly hard. In April, the jobless rate for black workers rose to 11.5 percent, a 0.5 percentage point jump. The rate for Latinos was 7.9 percent, up 0.6 percentage point.

Overall, April's labor market reflected an economy moving forward, but at a halting and unsteady pace. "The glass was half full in April," Soss said. "But by now it should have been 5/8ths full."